In late 2012 and early 2013, companies were allowed, for the first time, to apply for new TLDs (Top-Level Domains). There was a lot of press about big companies buying swaths of TLDs – for example, Google bought .google, .docs, .youtube, and many more. The rest of us heard the price tag – a cool $185,000 – and simply wrote this off as an interesting anecdote. What you may not realize is that there's a phase two, and it's relevant to everyone who owns a website (below: 544 new TLDs – cloud created with Tagxedo).
Phase 2: TLDs go live
You may have assumed that these TLDs would simply be bought up and tucked away for private use by mega-corporations, Saudi Princes, and Justin Bieber. The reality is that many of these TLDs are going to go live soon, and domains within them are going to be sold to the public, just like traditional TLDs (.com, .net, etc.). I talked to Steve Banfield, SVP Registrar Services at Demand Media (which owns eNom and Name.com), to get the scoop on what this process will mean for site owners.
Gold rush 2014
ICANN had more than 1,900 applications for TLDs, and of those Name.com currently lists 544 that will be available for sale in the near future. These domains cover a wide range of topics – here are just a few, to give you a flavor of what's up for grabs:
- .app
- .attorney
- .blog
- .boston
- .flowers
- .marketing
- .porn
- .realtor
- .store
- .web
- .wedding
- .wtf
This is an unprecedented explosion in available domain names, and you can expect a gold rush mentality as companies scoop up domains to protect trademarks and chase new opportunities and as individuals register a wide variety of vanity domains. So, when do these domains go on sale, and how much will they cost? As Steve explained to me, this gets a bit tricky…
"Sunrise" & Pre-registration
Understandably, ICANN is reluctant to simply release hundreds of TLDs into the wild all at once and upset the ecosystem. As the TLDs have been granted, they've been gradually delegated to the global DNS and are coming online in batches. As each TLD becomes available, it has to undergo a 60-day "sunrise" period. This period allows trademark holder to register claims and potentially lock down protected words. For example, Dell may want to lock down dell.computer or Amazon.com may grab amazon.book. These domains must still be registered (and paid for), but trademark holders get first dibs across any new TLD. Trademark disputes are a separate, legal issue (and beyond the scope of this post).
Some registrars will allow pre-registration during or immediately following the sunrise period. While you can't technically register a domain without a trademark claim during the 60 day sunrise, they'll essentially add you to a waiting list. This gets complicated, as multiple registrars could all have people on their waiting list for the same domain, so there are no guarantees. Some registrars are also charging premium prices for pre-registration, and those premiums could carry into your renewals, so read the fine print carefully.
Facts and figures
Once sunrise and pre-registration end, general availability begins. You may be wondering – when is that, exactly? The short answer is: it's complicated. I'll attempt to answer the big questions, with Steve's help:
When do the new domains go on sale?
The first group of domains began their sunrise period on November 26, 2013, and it ends on January 24, 2014. After that, additional domains will come into play in small groups, throughout the year. To find out about any particular domain/TLD, your best bet is to use a service like Name.com's TLD watch-list, which sends status notifications about specific domains you're interested in. Your own registrar of choice may have a similar service. The specifics of any given TLD will vary.
How much will the new domains cost?
Unfortunately, it depends. Each TLD can be priced differently, and even within a TLD, some domains may go for a premium rate. A few TLDs will probably be auction-based and not fixed-price. Use a watch-list tool or investigate your domains of choice individually.
What kind of a land grab can we expect?
With over 500 TLDs in play over the course of months, it's nearly impossible to say. Some domains, like .attorney, will clearly be competitive in local markets, and you can expect a gold rush mentality. Other domains, like .guru may be popular for vanity URLs. Regional and niche domains, like .okinawa or .rodeo are going to have a smaller audience. Then there are wildcards, like .ninja, that are really anyone's guess.
SEO implications
Naturally, as a Moz reader, you may be wondering what weight the new TLDs will have with search engines. Will a domain like seattle.attorney have the same ranking benefit as a more traditional domain like seattleattorney.com? Google's Matt Cutts has stated that the new TLDs won't have an advantage over existing domains, but was unclear on whether keywords in the new domain extensions will act as a ranking signal. I strongly suspect they will play this by ear, until they know how each of the new TLDs is being used. In my opinion, exact-match domains are no longer as powerful without other signals to back them up, and it's likely Google may lower the volume on some of the new TLDs or treat them more like sub-domains in terms of ranking power. In other words, they'll probably have some value, but don't expect miracles.
There may be indirect SEO benefits. For example, if you own seattle.attorney, it's more likely people will link to you with the phrase "Seattle attorney", and since that's now your brand/domain, it's more likely to look natural (because it's more likely to be natural). A well-matched name may also be more memorable, in some cases, although it may take people some time to get used to the new TLDs. To quote Steve directly:
What will matter is the memory of the end user and branding. Which is better: hilton.com or hilton.hotel, chevrolet.com or chevrolet.cars, coors.com or coors.beer? Today, it's easy to say the .com is "better" for brand recall, but over time we'll have to see which works better for brand marketing.
My conservative opinion is this – don't scoop up dozens of domains just in the hopes of magically ranking. Register domains that match your business objectives or that you want to protect – either because of your own trademarks or for future use. If you hit the domain game late and have a .com that you hate (this-is-all-they-had-left.com), it might be a good time to consider your options for something more memorable.
Todd Malicoat wrote an excellent post last year on choosing an exact-match domain, and I think many of his tips are relevant to the new TLDs and any domain purchase. Ultimately, some people will use the new TLDs creatively and powerfully, and others will use them poorly. There's opportunity here, but it's going to take planning, brand awareness, and ultimately, smart marketing.
I really like Steve's point about looking at this from a branding perspective. Today, .com seems so natural to us, but that's really because it was picked out as a gTLD way back in 1984 and we've spent decades getting used to it.
Who's to say that in ten years we won't see a Buzzfeed listicle looking back on .com's and .net's with nostalgia.
Ignoring all the SEO stuff, the real question is if these new TLDs have the potential to improve your brand in anyway. They probably won't in the immediate future, but it's an interesting idea to think about.
Also, god help us if Buzzfeed is still churning out listicles in 2023...
I think there's a real opportunity to get creative, if you're doing it to build something cool and memorable. If you're doing it to buy up real estate to flip in a year, I doubt that's going to go far with hundreds of TLDs up for grabs. I'm sure there will be some hugely premium domains in law, real estate, etc., but that kind of speculation is tough. Maybe put some of your Bitcoin money into it, but don't quit your day job ;)
it depends on the market. Younger and older generations have different ideas of what and what isn't spammy.
Sincerely I don't know what kind of advantages this new domain names may have.
What's sure is that a brand (especially big ones) will be able to mark its territory and possibly increase the awareness people may have toward the brand itself (just think how Google has pushed for its own domain terminations, or Coke).
Said that I think I have reserved the best domains EVAR:
SEO.WTF
INBOUND.WTF
I'm thinking about trying to grab:
SERIOUSLY.WTF
:)
i would take something like omg-aka.wtf
No one like my Brand Domain name :(((
I am not Fan of Domains like these - I mean how many .biz or .berlin or so on you see in serps or you are using.
Saw a xyz-webdesign.berlin Domain just a few days ago in Google Serps Page 3 and in Bing Serps on POS 3... but Bing in germany makes a lot of funny things... :)
It is completly away now - maybe to much SEO ;)
Gianluca,
I guess at the end of the day it comes back to what helps the user. There are already plenty of companies trying to do clever things with existing TLDs (styltil.es for example) and because we're so used to TLDs as extensions the user experience isn't great. How do I talk about them to other people who are used to these TLDs? I find myself saying things like "it's styll till dot E S. So it spells style tiles. No, there's no .com or anything, there's that .es". So today, those cute uses of TLDs are not user friendly. And for us oldies who are used to .com and .biz (remember .biz? Does anyone still use it?) these kinds of TLDs might not be great.
But to Gen Y and the people who come after, I can see using these TLDs being as natural as .com and .org are for us. And they should help get rid of internal monologues of "was that domain .org or .org.uk? I'll try .org. Nope. Definitely nope. I'd remember if it was that - and so would my boss. I'll try .org.uk" which should help with user experience.
And to be honest, I'd be very happy if my website was on benjamin.morel - that's pretty damn easy for people to remember. But I'll refrain from taking benjaminmorelis.fit because that would be a vanity URL too far.
At the very least, these domains will have the benefit of boosted click through conversion rate - when someone searches "Seattle attorney", seattle.attorney will probably appear as seattle.attorney, and stand out to the eye of the prospective searcher above seattlelaw.com.
For some people, I suspect the option is going to be more like registering "seattledivorce.attorney" vs. "best-seattle-divorce-attorney.net" - those are the situations where I think people might find opportunity.
Agreed. I think if you can snag one of these TLDs and have a shorter-tail domain, it may be more appealing than using some hyphenated, long-tail variation, like you mentioned above...
When will they stop with the creation of new domains...if ever? Seems like such a gimmick to get businesses to keep pouring more money at new domains every few years. You almost have to get involved with the new tld's just in case they do gain popularity but in 2 years we will all probably look back and say this was a non event.
I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, yes - a lot of people will make a lot of money off of an unproven value proposition. On the other hand, we're just running out of .com's, many other extensions are being used in ways that make no sense or aren't what they were intended for, and we need some solution. I like the flexible approach, but the impact of flooding the market with hundreds of domains in the short-term may be pretty messy.
What is particularly interesting in the name space expansion are the .brands. Brands will not sell second level domains on their .brand top level domain. They will use their claimed space to innovate digital engagement with customers through partners and channels. They will for the first time be able innovate on their authentic name space that no one can infringe upon, phish, spam or fraud. Total control and visibility and a fresh pallet of capabilities on which to innovate. It wont take long for the public to recognize and become comfortable with the change; run.nike, drive.bmw. clear simple; ie: keymessage.brand, memorable, authentic and authoritative. Regarding SEO rankings, my view is nothing changes at the essence. Search engines seek to deliver the best possible most relevant result for the user. That wont change, however, owning the opportunity to develop better matching results is the innovation opportunity for a .brand. ie: I want to find information on a 318 BMW. If BMW creates; 318.BMW and publishes rich content on that web space, the result is an exact match and will deliver the best search engine signals that make it the best result for that user. That's just one use case. A lot of innovation opportunities result from the new capabilities inherent in the .brand registry very interesting. It provides for those brands the ability to both defend against nefarious actors and innovate ahead of competitors who did not apply for their own .brand. Fun times.
I like your thinking, but can't brands already do that one level down with sub-domains? ex. run.nike.com, drive.bmw.com, etc. I guess it's possible that taking it up a level will have increased appeal and effect, I can see arguments for and against it but only time will tell.
Oh, man! More headaches...
Coming from an online reputation management background, I worry these new domains are only going to encourage more negative SEO. For example, we tell our clients to register negative domain names like [your brand]sucks.com in order to cut off that vulnerability from being taken advantage of by your competitors.
But now, we'll have to worry about other creative domain names like this now:
However, I can't say it's not a useful way to market yourself either.
Great post. I think it will be interesting to see how the domain name market plays out with the emergence of all these new TLDs. In the end I believe .com will stay very strong because millions of businesses have invested many marketing and advertising dollars on their .com domain name and web address for the past two decades. However, I think some of the new TLDs have an opportunity to do very well in certain niches when they are branded effectively. We have seen some creative brands do this very well in the past. .Me domains were never that popular until brands such as About.Me came along and made a name for themselves on a .me extension. There is also Re.Vu, which made a name for itself on a .vu extension and to be honest, I could not even tell you what .vu stands for.
Extensions that were supposed to take of,f but never did, and were able to garnish millions in domain investment dollars were .mobi's. Everyone thought websites are going mobile, so they had to get a .mobi name and a lot of investors lost big time on those bets. I think the key is to really examine how brandable and memorable the domain name is. I don't think you can ever go to wrong with a very short .com name or a very short brandable name with a new gTLD.
May be not in terms of search engine rankings (or any other benefit), but these TLDs will certainly allow a user to connect a domain name easily to its service field.
For example, two domains (abc.com and abc.seo) from SEO field ranking for a specific keyword (seo service provider), then chances are more that the user will click on the second one (abc.seo) by considering it more relevant. Thus improving its CTR in SERPs.
Great stuff Doc.
PS - Love name.com, been working with them for a couple years now.
Your pal,
Chenzo
Name.com is good there who.is is what I love
Google apparently applied to control 101 TLDs themselves, the first of which went into sunrise this week (.みんな). Their domain registry division for handling rollout of the approved new TLDs is Charleston Road Registry.
What's interesting is that Google is making a chunk of their TLDs publicly available. Not all of the TLDs bought by big brands are being held just for internal use.
awww man, I am a sucker for buying domains. I have pre-ordered a few new TLD's all ready but you have just whet my appetite again Dr Pete!
I agree- I dont think the new TLD's will offer any real SEO value given that we have seen EMD update but there is a big opportunity here to grab something that will be of value to someone in the future.... I love a little domain gamble....
Where did you pre-order your domains?
Hi Douglas,
You can currently pre-register domains on name.com. You can learn more here: https://name.com/preorder.
Thanks for sharing the link, Alex! :)
Moz covering an interesting piece of news, here. There's definitely some SEO potential here… small, but add unique TLDs to the SEO toolbox.
Also, does Praveen ever NOT get the first comment on a blog post? Ha.
Once I was the "Praveen" :)
I guess I am on Gianluca's path to be somewhere there one day where he is today. Bless me. :)
I'm gonna start waking up at 12:15am just to be the first to comment on my own post. #thatwillneverhappen
I love the new TLDs, some are a bit spammy sounding if abused but overall I've seen some good implementations. Such as some art galleries utilizing .gallery, etc.
I don't think it should have an effect on rankings as Google and other search engines will follow the same rules to rank websites as they are now. I am a web developer and if I purchase some thing like adeelsarfaraz.webdeveloper I don't this would give me any benefit over my existing domain adeelsarfaraz.com if I don't have nice content on it or if I try to spam it with relevant keywords. Most people don't remember domain names anyway and the longer they are the harder it will become for them. Ultimately they will go to search engines for searching and the results should return the right website based on their keyword.
Great food for thought, Dr. Pete. It'll definitely be something interesting to watch in the next year.
I love to read this, thanks.
Such types of new TLD's will definitely work but, at this time I thing this is too early to spend a huge amount of money, at least small blogger won't afford it.
But I am also searching for few good keywords in my range. This is quite interesting let's see, what happens?
Well said, Ewan.
Yes, initially I feel it will take the market longer to get used to them. People still have trouble with sub-domains and .Net. These are regular people not SEO or tech people. So I think .Com will still remain king for quite some time, similar to 1-800, however over the long haul and like you said, if-you-have-a-really-bad-domain-name.com now might be the time to buy and stake a better claim :-)
If anything, getting an TLD seems more of a branding exercise rather than dealing with SEO. Sure www.amazon.books looks way better than www.amazon.com and then searching for books or typing in books.amazon.com. This will have more to do with creating a brand impact rather than improving search results.
Very informative article. Great job Doc.
What I would like to know is how this affects geo search engine optimization. Obviously English language is used quite frequently especially in our industry.
I'm assuming that Google's Webmaster tools ability to allow us to select the country we want to Target will be the solution however I cannot see a lot of names that are German language for instance I'm certain I'll be “.Airplane" however I doubt we'll see “.Flugzeug" (the German word for Airplane) or any others to be honest maybe one step at a time right?
It just seems like the rest of the world is not going to be dealt with as quickly the USA.
Hello Dr. Peter! This is such a very informative post! Thank you very much for sharing this. I totally like your point that exact-match domains are no longer as powerful without other signals to back them up. I believe that they will also have some value. I will definitely be sharing this!
I don't think that .com's are going anywhere anytime soon.
With that being said, I think that the local TLD's are gonna start gaining traffic in Google local searches. For example, I can definitely see "carpetcleaning.nyc" (or something similar) ranking #1 in New York for carpet cleaning. For the large market cities, I think there is definitely gonna be a race to grab up these domains.
Wow, this is fascinating! Think of all the opportunities we will have for marketing. You can make your Domain name a real statement.
I am concerned that it is just going to cost companies a lot of money in buying domain names just to protect them from the future. If search engines decide to give credit to a particular .domain related to an industry then any existing DPR might be effected. Without knowing what may come it seems like buying them is the safe way to go. But then doesn't that just spin the wheel of the same people owning the same domains?
I'm so excited. So hope I can bag the ones I want :)
I really don´t get it, I have read many articles that claim that the EMD is not relevant anymore, and then, I read big bunch of other articles to claim that EMD could no bring a Google Penalization if overoptimized... :(
Now everyone is happy about this new damain tlds?
Isn´t this just silly?
Great post, that all TLDs are really good. If it comes in market then I'm sure it makes huge impact on SEO also..
Will it effect top TLDs domain's ranking??
I wonder how wary people who are not as familiar with these changes will be on clicking on one of these TLDs. If you are targeting an older audience that is used to seeing .com will you suffer if you try using a new TLD? Something worth investigating.
I also see this as having some impact on relatively small businesses as they try to maintain their reputation by buying up various domain. Though I think I'd rather risk a small, slightly improbable dent in my reputation than spend the large amounts of money required to buy up all possible brand relevant domains.
If you are a big company though, you have no choice but to buy every single relvant domina, as a phishing attack or reputation attack can have terrible consequences.
This is really the time to get creative! Most of us are used to the .com, .co.uk, etc., but with longer TLD's, it will definately shake things up a bit.
Is there any advantage to using name.com or enom compared to GoDaddy to pre-register a new TLD domain in hopes of snagging it before others?
For open registration, the process should be pretty normal. Different registrars may have different availability and prices, but you'll buy the domains in the usual way. For pre-registration, the situation sounds a bit more murky. Let say three different people pre-register for the same domain via three different registrars. It isn't clear what the dispute resolution process will look like. My sense is that even the registrars don't know who will actually get the domains when there's a conflict. It may be a first-come, first-served situation.
ICANN wrote about this last month, but they aren't clear on dispute resolution:
https://blog.icann.org/2013/11/pre-reserve-a-domain-name-or-not-icann-answers-the-question/
Agree pre-registration is very murky right now. ICANN has been concentrated more on Trademarks and dealing with concerns/problems arising from someone trying to register a domain that infringes on a TM; plus the whole structure side and decisions on what new gTLDs there will be and who owns the Registry for them (e.g. the company Amazon lost petition to have a .amazon because of the geographic region of the Amazon).
If there are more details on the actual execution and how situations will be handled like this example, then I haven't read it.
The concept of these new TLD's is amazing and I think this will have an impect on rankings too in future the same way .co.uk, com.au have.
"The first group of domains began their sunrise period on November 26, 2013, and it ends on January 24, 2014."
How do you find out which groups are on sale?
Best bet is to sort out what you're interested in and use a watch-list tool, like this one - https://www.name.com/account/ntld/watcher. ICANN lists all the applications, but they don't list which ones are actually being resold (at least, not that I can find), and each registrar has slightly different arrangements and rules. It's a bit complicated, and I'm not sure there's a set date for each block yet.
I'm grumpy and not so keen on the new TLD but it's just because it's going to make thing more complicated I stick with my .com thanks!
I just hope its not going to be a giant cooperation grab so all of the big players have their own domains but the little businesses trying to make it get pushed out and push down SERP's time will tell.
Thanks for the post Dr.pete
I wish, those should not be taken into another EMD-PMD update. The same is written by you Dr. Peter :) and I am sure, such update will come as SEOs would be using the TLDs to manipulate rankings.
Are you buying one for 185k? :-)
You know, I actually spent half an hour awake in bed last night wondering how many domains you'd have to re-sell to recoup buying ".seo" :)
The $185K fee was for companies that wanted to be the REGISTRY for a TLD. If you want to control all the .guru domains in the world yes you had to shell out some big bucks. If you just want to by one single .guru or .attorney then you're going to spend something comparable to buying any .com.
I have strange gut suspicion that these new TLDs will actually play a much higher role in the coming months. The one statement that relieves me is that the new TLDs won't take precedence over the previous existing domains, but is that statement to be generated for other search engines like Bing or Yahoo? Nevertheless, guess I have a new topic to discuss with my manager come this Monday!
Wherever there is change there is opportunity so I think some creative types will devise ingenious ways of leveraging the new domains to add genuine value but I don't think they'll be a panacea for the masses.
Hi Peter
I am a business owner and i am planning to buy domain extension domain.biz
Can you suggest me some other alternatives as I am managing a Web development Company.
Thanks :)
I've discussed this with some friends and at the moment we think it will help further cement .com as the king but further down the line, who knows? Releasing potentially thousands of TLDs opens up the doors for all kinds of "spammy" domains, but one would assume that this is offset by the ridiculous cost. Still, if they prove to have ranking advantages then I have no doubt that some of the more enterprising *Cough* BH, SEOs will make a killing.
I think taking a short domain like 5 or 6 characters name, with very easy tone for any business will be much profitable rather than a TLD's... This is my personal opinion ... with TLD you need to invest lot of money, but with a Creative Idea you need to do some genuine promotion of you business and you will be up in SERP's... Just Try it... :)
This will not "Add" any impact on What we usually do in terms of SEO it will just add an keyword phrase in domain. Which will make domains more interesting and fetchy but. will categorize. i don't understand why people are coming up with such crazy things to have keywords as domain, Go with the and have some new tactics and techniques and stop trying manipulating ( though SEO is all about manipulating engines ;) ) search engines.
In due time I believe the new TLD's will be heavy ranking tools, First allowing for a better more precise match for Seo purposes and more appealing to the users eye, of coarse in the future when all of us are getting grey.( even you Dr.Pete) The younger generation will grow accustom to the look and lets admit they kinda make more sense! Can't wait to see if the premium TLD's are going to be sold with a premium renewal charges?
I remember the rush for the .me TLD. Along with many others I was on that like tulips; it never bloomed. I expect a similar rush to bust cycle.
Hi Peter, thanks for the heads up.
I keep reading the odd news article about this, but do you know of a site where we can actually see up and coming market release dates for these TLD's.
There is nothing worse finding out after they have been released.
Cheers.
Found a cool little interactive infographic on the estimated sunrise launch dates for gTLDs - https://blog.europeandomaincentre.com/infographics-launch-dates-for-the-617-new-gtlds/#more-202.
They are estimated since most/majority don't have actual dates yet, just the general month.
Nice Post :)